[Ciro Scope] D3.

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Built skinny and lanky rather than broad-shouldered and muscular, Ciro was never considered much of a looker. The spitting image of his father, most people see Ciro as very plain, seeing as there is really nothing remotely special about his appearance. He stands at about 5'10 - average height, though a bit on the short side - with long limbs and digits. He isn't too fussed with his appearance; he's always got other things on his mind, anyway.

His skin is somewhat light, but due to genetics he isn't all that pale for the amount of time he spends indoors. It isn't particularly blemished; he has virtually no freckles, which isn't surprising - Ciro doesn't enjoy being out in the sun for a particularly long time. His face is slim, with a pointed chin and a rather long nose set dead center. The District Three teenager has never been fond of his large ears, but thankfully his long hair conceals the extent of them from view. His teeth are straight, and he keeps them clean, if not shining - though he doesn't smile all that often, and when he does, it rarely reaches his eyes. It's not that he isn't happy; it's just that he's got so much else on his mind that he doesn't think to smile.

His eyes are often described as ghostlike; their pale grey-blue hue makes it seem as if his they are nothing but thin wisps of mist surrounding a deep black pupil. His father has precisely the same eyes - this prompted his mother to nickname them the "ghost twins" when Ciro was very young. These eyes are set small in his face, framed by bushy, lightly arching dark brown eyebrows, and sometimes obscured by his long, scruffy bangs.

Ciro dropped into the habit of rarely brushing his hair at an early age, and it has stuck with him through his teen years; the mop of dark brown locks is rarely ever neat, always unruly and sticking out in places. He likes it long, despite his mother's constant insistence that he should cut it; he prefers it as is, and isn't up for changing it because he knows he'd miss it if it were gone.

Clothes and fashion have never been interests of Ciro; he wears what he has, what's comfortable, and never spends any time trying to really polish himself up unless work calls for it. His casual attire most often includes a t-shirt - he buys a lot of logo tees, regardless of whether the logo means anything to him or not, more because they're comfortable and suitable for most casual occasions. Not that he gets out much. So, they're suitable for work, anyway. Jeans in the winter and cutoff shorts in the summer are also common articles of clothing for Ciro.



As a young boy, Ciro never had many opportunities to practice making friends, and as a result, he's never been good at it. He's not a social person at all; he's very introverted and has trouble talking to people; on the off chance he's in a conversation, he doesn't really know how to continue it - what could someone like him possibly have to say that would interest others? So reflexively, he resorts to talking about his work. And if nothing else has scared them away yet, that certainly will.

It doesn't bother him, the isolation; he likes keeping to himself, because he's always got a whole lot to think about. Ciro is a thinker at heart, busy in his own mind, constantly thinking about how things work and the reasons for things and even things of a much odder nature - a favorite contemplation of his is death in general. What is it like to die? How would he die? Would it hurt? What if he died now, right that second? Who would miss him? Who would be at his funeral? Would he even have a funeral? Perhaps these weren't unusual thoughts for a mortician's son, but when Ciro tries to get others interested in them as well...well, that's when they back away slowly and never speak to him again.

As a result of his constant thinking about death, Ciro is a rather skittish person; though he doesn't voice it aloud, he harbors a constant fear of anything that could possibly kill him; he doesn't like crossing roads for fear of being hit by cars, always keeps his bedroom door locked in case of murderers sneaking into the house, doesn't like being up high for fear of falling and breaking his neck. He's seen countless times what death can do to a person, and fears the day when it will do the same to him. So what's wrong with being a little paranoid sometimes?

One positive quality Ciro has acquired as a result of his isolation growing up is a strong sense of independence; he takes care of himself, Ciro, because he can and he doesn't want to trouble anyone else to do it for him. He's a hard worker, and does what needs to be done without complaint - in fact, he likes working; there's a lot of time for thinking, when you're digging a grave or dressing a body. It's a relaxing way to pass time, in contrast to everyone else's opinion.

Though he's never had much chance to show it, Ciro most definitely inherited his mother's brains; the eighteen-year-old is incredibly booksmart just like much of his district, excelling in his homeschooling. Intelligence-wise, he has the potential to do much more than the work his father has trained him to do, but he would rather do this, anyway. Because someone has to, right?



The Scope family consists of many generations of morticians; the family business had been kept alive for decades, originating long before the rebellion even occurred. It was still going strong when Simon Scope, age fifty-four, was killed in a motor vehicle accident, leaving his twenty-two year old eldest son, Collin, to take over the well-known Scope funeral home. Meanwhile, Zoe Becker was a well-known professor at District Three's prominent university; she was incredibly smart, and put her knowledge to good use teaching the aspiring minds of one of the most knowledgeable districts in Panem. No one expected it when she ran off with the city's dark-haired, pale-eyed, somewhat creepy mortician. Well, creepy to everyone else, anyway. He was actually a very trustworthy, honest man, and they were very much in love. That was why, a year later, Ciro Elias Scope was born.

Little Ciro grew up in a very interesting location indeed. The somewhat shabby Scope funeral home was located on a thin plot of land in between two factory buildings in the middle of District Three's hustling, bustling urban center. A graveyard stretched out back, consisting of scruffy grass, upturned dirt, and scattered gravestones, with a small shed off to the side containing gravedigger's tools. The small family of three lived above the parlor in a small two bedroom apartment, one for Ciro and one for his parents. Sure, he was playing tag with himself while darting between gravestones for fun, but as a little kid, he couldn't care less.

His mother kept her teaching job rather than stay home all day to watch him, so that job fell to his father. But his father had to work too, of course - he had a business to run. So this meant that Ciro would follow him around the funeral parlor as he dressed bodies and organized ceremonies and did everything that morticians do. Ciro liked it; it was interesting, and he wasn't old enough to realize that these people were actually dead, so he never complained. This time together forged a close bond between Ciro and the father he looked so much like, even at that age. His mother was always tired when she came home, so he didn't spend as much time with her...although that changed when he was four years old.


On a particularly dreary Monday afternoon, Ciro's father was polishing up a body to be put in its casket soon, and Ciro the four-year-old was seated at his feet, shining up the shoes that the body was to wear when it was buried. It didn't really need to be done, but Ciro liked to feel useful, so his father often assigned him pointless tasks so he would have something to do while he worked. Just as he was finishing up the second shoe and going to do it over again, the phone rang.

His father went over to answer it, assuming that it was just the usual call from a client, perhaps in regards to the particular body he was dressing now, whose funeral would be held the next morning. But Ciro watched in confusion as his face went ghostly white, his mouth dropped open, and he let the phone fall to the ground in shock as he ran out of the house, knocking over a rack of surgical scissors as he did so. Ciro scurried over to the window and watched as his father climbed into the rust bucket of a second car they had (his mother always used the good one for work) and drove off, completely forgetting the four-year-old he was leaving alone in the funeral parlor beside a half-dressed dead body.

An accident. His mother had been coming home from work, driving through an intersection when another car hit hers dead-on after zooming through a traffic light. She'd suffered severe head trauma, and was now paralyzed from the waist down. But she was alive. They took her home from the hospital in a wheelchair, only to rush her back the next day when she suffered a massive seizure. Epilepsy, the doctors said. The brain injury from the accident had caused her to develop epilepsy. It was clear that Ciro's mother would never be able to return to work again. But she was alive.


my boy builds coffins and i think it's a shame
that when each one's been made he can't see it again


Things were different from then on, living in the Scope household. Ciro's mother was mainly bedridden for the first year living with her paralysis, and Ciro's father had to help her do everything - he didn't have much time to look after his son on top of all the mortuary work that had to be done. So Ciro was often left to his own devices, which didn't bother him; he enjoyed playing outside in the graveyard, anyway.

When Ciro turned six, his mother (now learning to use her wheelchair to maneuver about the apartment, though she still couldn't get downstairs to the parlor until someone built her a ramp) elected to home school her son rather than send him to public school, both because she missed teaching someone, anyone, and because his father was needing his help more and more as he got older and work in the funeral home piled up. So each day for two or three hours, Ciro would sit at his mother's bedside as she taught him anything she could think for him to learn. (a lot of which wouldn't be included in a normal public elementary curriculum) She taught him math, certain sciences, even Panem's history. Every year they'd watch the Hunger Games together as a 'learning experience', as she called it, to learn about each of the districts, the Capitol, and the brutal tradition that had been established decades ago. Ciro hated it right from the age he was old enough to understand it. These people were dying. Twenty-three child bodies would have to be dressed and buried by morticians like his father each year, just because the Capitol wanted to prove a point.


Because he didn't attend public school, Ciro had virtually no opportunity to make friends. He was the 'creepy mortician's son', who no one really liked to associate with. At first this bothered him, but he soon got over it when he was old enough to really help his father with work; by age ten he was right beside his father as he embalmed the bodies, handing him scalpels and surgical scissors and everything else he needed, while his father described step-by-step how to do certain procedures so that Ciro could learn and do it on his own. When he wasn't in the parlor working, he was outside in the graveyard, just sitting and thinking. It was a relaxing place to be, if you didn't think about all the dead beneath your feet.

Sometimes he watched the hired gravedigger as he dug for a new casket to be buried, working busily and diligently, rarely stopping before a job was finished. Sometimes Ciro brought him water and food, and he always thanked him graciously and finished it all before going back to work. One day, when he was eleven years old, Ciro asked his name. "Hayes Watt," he said. "Hey Hayes, can I help you dig?" Hayes looked at him strangely for a moment before nodding. "Sure. There's an extra shovel in the shed. Go get it, and I'll tell you what you can do to help."

And that was how they became friends, Ciro and Hayes, though Hayes was probably about sixteen and Ciro was only eleven. Hayes understood the unusual thoughts that went through Ciro's mind, seeing as he dug graves for a living. Ciro liked working with him, too, and just digging the graves in general; it was hard work, but it was worth it, having a friend to do it with. Even when Hayes wasn't around, Ciro went out and dug when his father didn't need him or his mother wasn't teaching him; it gave him a lot of time to think.


my boy builds coffins, he makes them all day
but it's not just for work and it isn't for play


As time went on, Ciro's mother's seizures became more frequent, and she needed more and more care. Ciro's father was often kept busy making sure she had everything she needed, so Ciro was left to handle many of the mortuary tasks. By now, he could embalm and dress bodies on his own, so he did so, whenever his father needed him to. By age sixteen, he was officially his father's business partner; he answered phone calls from clients, arranged funerals on his own, even put on a suit and tie and attended the ceremonies. He didn't particularly enjoy dealing with his living clients, though. It was much easier, just focusing on the dead ones.

He continued to dig graves in his spare time, though his father had decreased Hayes's hours because his son was able to do it as well, so the young man didn't have to be around as much, much to Ciro's dismay. Despite the five year age difference, Ciro loved having at least one person around who didn't mind it when he asked, "How do you want to die?" Someone who answered the question, too. "A bullet to my head. It's fastest." Ciro disagreed, though. He wanted to die of old age, in his sleep, because it wouldn't hurt. He didn't want death to hurt.

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